2017 LGTV WebOS 3.5 thoughts

[Zeroio]

I'm checking out the UJ7700 with WebOS 3.5 and figured I'd share some thoughts.

First, I have found it to be very snappy and fun to use. It seems that everyday I find a new feature or use. Changing channels is quick, the extra content like Cast, YouTube Videos, and Web Browser is nice. I haven't used WebOS before so it might just be very similar to recent versions.

I'm a developer and enthusiast so I have started poking around with the apps and capabilities. As far as downloadable apps go, these are not available in WebOS 3.5: Pandora, Plex, ESPN, and SlingTV. The IP control is very good so I can do things like Turn On/Off, change inputs, and change volume.

Integration with iPhone is terrible... the app has to re-pair constantly and I would much rather have AirPlay. It's interesting though to navigate your phone from the TV.

A feature I was hoping for is to be able to record Live TV to a USB hard drive – correct me if it is possible to do this. I will probably never use the features to magnify, zoom, or capture the screen. I would like to be able to Pause Live TV or record some shows.

The Photos/Videos/Music work pretty well with my DLNA server. Plex DLNA server shows up and it's easy to find my recent TV and Movies here. I've compiled a music 'My Playlist' but I'm curious if you can have more than one playlist. Is the TV downloading this music or streaming it from Plex DLNA? I like how the music plays over the content and has a floating interface. As others have said, the DLNA UI could use an upgrade to rectangular images instead of squares. The MultiView UI could be updated too... looks like a computer instead of a TV.

The Magic Remote knows which input you are on. I have an AppleTV 3 and the remote can control it. With AppleTV 3 though, learning the magic remote was terrible. I had to use another learning remote to capture the Magic Remote and then have the AppleTV 3 learn from it. Holding the Down or Up button does not repeat correctly on the AppleTV 3 – it just goes really slow instead of fast. It would be nice if WebOS had a setting for those IR commands built-in its list. If you have a workaround please share. I'm holding out for an AppleTV with 4k.

The TV itself? Pure black is black, colors are incredible, but titles on a black screen are just ok.

A final thought... Is there a manual for WebOS 3.5??? I've had to basically discover all these features and questions myself.

[Amarildo]

Comprei a uj7500 e tambem nao tem o plex, espero que liberem logo para o webos 3.5

[Zeroio]

Some updates:

Plex is now available for WebOS 3.5... has been for a few weeks. It works real well but of course I have some developer suggestions:

1. The Plex startup screen starts out black, then you see a dark gray border around the Plex logo, then some resizing, then loaded. Just annoying.

2. The arrow keys on the remote functions are different than the built-in Photos/Videos app and the Youtube/Vudu apps... for example when I use the arrow down I'd just like to see where I am in the video progress, but with plex it jumps around.

3. Plex is slow to start unlike every other video app (Youtube, Vudu, etc.)

Vudu 4k is really amazing. I purchased a few titles and I'm not sure I can go back to HD!

[sbzz]

Hi All, yes you can record live TV on a USB drive attached to the TV even if the TV itself is off. This is super cool.

 

What I'd like to do, is connect to this USB drive from say, my laptop. Is this possible and how?

 

[cavinstall]

You mentioned using IP control.

Is there a specific way to turn on IP control (3rd party) in the 2017 LGs?   I have a client with 49UJ7700, 43UJ6300, and OLED55C7P.   They have removed the RS232 control on many of their TVs and looking for a way to control other than IR.

[Zeroio]

The short answer is there are projects like this one: 

link hidden, please login to view

 which have the IP communication protocol. I've tried it and it's very complete. I then explored a bit more and found that I can run 'Homebridge' and a plug-in called 'homebridge-lgtv2' so that the TV can be turned on/off from Apple's Home app. If you are using an automation system you might find similar code. For me, my automation system talks to the lgtv-http-server to perform the functions through a Mac Mini which also doubles as a media server.

Before buying an LG I saw that Samsung was very closed and LG was open, so that made the decision for me.

[SteveK]

Hi, new user today with OLED65C7P. Streaming NETFLIX, Amazon, Sling TV and Tablo works great. 

Question... when I turn TV on it comes on Live TV. Can I change that? No antenna or cable attached.

 

Steve

[George Hofmeister]

On 29/06/2017 at 7:27 PM, Zeroio said:

1. The Plex startup screen starts out black, then you see a dark gray border around the Plex logo, then some resizing, then loaded. Just annoying.

This set of actions is Plex talking to the television to find out what resolution, whether it has to do backend encoding/rendering etc.

[Alessio1989]

3.5 looks great on 43uj750 but I cannot play FLAC from PC server connected in the home network, and VOBSUB support is a a big missing feature.

[George Hofmeister]

9 hours ago, Alessio1989 said:

3.5 looks great on 43uj750 but I cannot play FLAC from PC server connected in the home network, and VOBSUB support is a a big missing feature.

The lack of FLAC is a bit odd as it is 'free software' and as such can be implemented without licensing costs.

VOBSUB seem to be more of an issue.  Unlike a .srt subtitle file which are plain text, the .idx & .sub files of VOBSUB are a combination of text and graphics.  Perhaps LG do not want to not want to spend the time and resources developing a webOS system for what is essentially a Windows platform solution.

That said you could use the LG suggestions form to nudge them in to action, a link to which can be found elsewhere on the forum.

[Alessio1989]

EDIT:

where is the correct forum/site/portal/repo to report bugs?

ORIGINAL:

Yes, I understand that VOB subtitles are a different matter than FLAC playback from PC which looks more like a bug...

Anyway, with version 03.60.15 I am unable to play some MKVs videos coded as follows:

General
Unique ID                      : 245174552607972083599873351013641244511 (0xB872E6B81EA4DB6190CBDC81E12C4F5F)
Format                         : Matroska
Format version                 : Version 2
File size                      : 490 MiB
Duration                       : 24 min 26 s
Overall bit rate               : 2 802 kb/s
Encoded date                   : UTC 2012-04-14 01:49:48
Writing application            : mkvmerge v5.5.0 ('Healer') built on Apr  6 2012 21:43:24
Writing library                : libebml v1.2.3 + libmatroska v1.3.0
Attachments                    : 01036_microsbe.ttf / 8514oem.fon / 8514oem_0.fon / 8514oem_1.fon / 8514oemt.fon / 8514oemt_0.fon / ALIEN5.TTF / ALIEN5_0.TTF / ALIEN5_1.TTF / andlso.ttf / andlso_0.ttf / andlso_1.ttf / arial.ttf / arial_.ttf / arial__0.ttf / arial__1.ttf / arial__2.ttf / arial__3.ttf / arial_0.ttf / arial_1.ttf / arial_1A.ttf / arial_1B.ttf / arial_1C.ttf / arial_1D.ttf / arial_1E.ttf / arial_1F.ttf / arial_2.ttf / arial_3.ttf / arial_4.ttf / arial_5.ttf / arial_6.ttf / arial_7.ttf / arial_8.ttf / arial_9.ttf / arial_10.ttf / arial_11.ttf / arial_12.ttf / arial_13.ttf / arial_14.ttf / arial_15.ttf / arial_16.ttf / arial_17.ttf / arial_18.ttf / arial_19.ttf / arial_20.ttf / arial_21.ttf / arial_22.ttf / arial_23.ttf / arial_24.ttf / arial_25.ttf / arial_A.ttf / arial_B.ttf / arial_C.ttf / arial_D.ttf / arial_E.ttf / arial_F.ttf / ArnoPro-Smbd.otf / Beast Wars.ttf / Brady_Bunch.ttf / Brady_Bunch_0.ttf / Brady_Bunch_1.ttf / Brady_Bunch_2.ttf / bradybun.ttf / bradybun_0.ttf / bradybun_1.ttf / bradybun_2.ttf / bradybun_3.ttf / bradybun_4.ttf / bradybun_5.ttf / bradybun_6.ttf / bradybun_7.ttf / bradybun_8.ttf / bradybun_9.ttf / Dynasty.ttf / Dynasty_0.ttf / Eco-Files.ttf / Eco-Files_0.ttf / GCRANK.TTF / GCRANK_0.TTF / Illusion.TTF / Illusion_0.TTF / JungleStandard.ttf / JungleStandard_0.ttf / JungleStandard_1.ttf / JungleStandard_2.ttf / JungleStandard_3.ttf / JungleStandard_4.ttf / JungleStandard_5.ttf / JungleStandard_6.ttf / JungleStandard_7.ttf / JungleStandard_8.ttf / linkin.ttf / linkin_0.ttf / linkin_1.ttf / linkin_2.ttf / linkin_3.ttf / linkin_4.ttf / linkin_5.ttf / linkin_6.ttf / linkin_7.ttf / linkin_8.ttf / linkin_9.ttf / linkin_A.ttf / linkin_B.ttf / linkin_C.ttf / linkin_D.ttf / MECHAG.TTF / MECHAG_0.TTF / MECHAG_1.TTF / MECHAG_2.TTF / Sansation_Regular.ttf / y2k.ttf / y2k_0.ttf / y2k_1.ttf / y2k_2.ttf / y2k_3.ttf / y2k_4.ttf / y2k_5.ttf / y2k_6.ttf / y2k_7.ttf / y2k_8.ttf / y2k_9.ttf / y2k_A.ttf / y2k_B.ttf / y2k_C.ttf / y2k_D.ttf / OFFEBB_.TTF / Sansation_Regular.ttf / MICROSBE.TTF

Video
ID                             : 1
Format                         : AVC
Format/Info                    : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                 : High 10@L5
Format settings, CABAC         : Yes
Format settings, RefFrames     : 16 frames
Muxing mode                    : Header stripping
Codec ID                       : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                       : 24 min 26 s
Width                          : 1 280 pixels
Height                         : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio           : 16:9
Frame rate mode                : Constant
Frame rate                     : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                    : YUV
Chroma subsampling             : 4:2:0
Bit depth                      : 10 bits
Scan type                      : Progressive
Writing library                : x264 core 122 r2184 5c85e0a
Encoding settings              : cabac=1 / ref=16 / deblock=1:1:1 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=10 / psy=1 / psy_rd=0.40:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=10 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=60 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=14.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=81 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:0.60
Language                       : Japanese
Default                        : Yes
Forced                         : No

Audio
ID                             : 2
Format                         : AAC
Format/Info                    : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                 : LC
Codec ID                       : A_AAC
Duration                       : 24 min 26 s
Channel(s)                     : 2 channels
Channel positions              : Front: L R
Sampling rate                  : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                     : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode               : Lossy
Title                          : AAC 2.0
Language                       : Japanese
Default                        : Yes
Forced                         : No

Text
ID                             : 3
Format                         : ASS
Codec ID                       : S_TEXT/ASS
Codec ID/Info                  : Advanced Sub Station Alpha
Compression mode               : Lossless
Default                        : Yes
Forced                         : No